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POEMS 



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GEOFFREY DEARMER 




NEW YORK 

Robert M. McBride ^ Company 

1918 



•V 



-J^^Q^, 



BcMcatioii 

To CHRISTOPHER 

Killed, Suvla Bay, October 6th, 1915. 

At Suvla when a sickening curse of sound 
Came hurtling from the shrapnel-shaken skies, 
Without a word you shuddered to the ground 
And with a gesture hid your darkening eyes. 
You are not blind to-day — 
But were we blind before you went away ? 

Forgive us then, if, faltering, we fail 
To speak in terms articulate of you ; 
Now Death's celestial journeymen unveil 
Your naked soul — tlui ioul we hardly knew. 
O beauty scarce unfurled. 
Your blood shall help to purify the world. 

Awakened now, no longer zve believe 

Knight-errantry a myth of long ago. 

Let us not shame your happiness and grieve ; 

All close wi feel you live and move, we know 

Your life shall ever be 

Close to our lives enshrined eternally. 

V 



CONTENTS 



I 




The Dardanelles 






PAoa 


From " W " Beach 


3 


A Prayer 


5 


Fallen 


6 


The Turkish Trench Dog 


r 


The Sentinel 


9 


Mudros after the Evacuation 


12 


The Dead Turk 


18 



II 

B.E.F. 

Missing 17 

Two Trench Poems 22 

Gommecourt 24 

A Vision 31 

Revelation 83 

Tell me, Stranger 34 

Spring in the Trenches 36 

On the Road 88 

Keats, before Action 41 



viii CONTENTS 






PAOB 


The Somme 


42 


Somme Flower Talk 


46 


To the Uttermost Farthing 


48 


In the Mess 


53 


A Trench Incident 


54 


Reality 


55 


" We Poets of the Proud Old Lineage " 


56 



III 



Miscellaneous Poems 




Song 


59 


The Shadow 


60 


Everychild 


62 


Child of the Flowing Tide 


64 


Eight Sonnets 


66 


Keats 


74 


Meeting Her in the Street 


75 


Her Homage 


76 


Reaction 


77 


April 


78 


May-June 


79 


The Strolling Singer 


80 


The French Mother to Her Unborn Child 


87 



My thanks are due to the editors of the Nineteenth 
Century, Comhill Magazine, Observer, New Statesman, 
and Westminster Gazette, for permission to reprint 
certain of these poems. 



I 

THE DARDANELLES 



FROM "W" BEACH 

The Isle of Imbros, set in turquoise blue, 
Lies to the westward ; on the eastern side 

The purple hills of Asia fade from view, 
And rolling battleships at anchor ride. 

White flocks of cloud float by, the sunset glows, 
And dipping gulls fleck a slow-waking sea, 

Where dim steel-shadowed forms with foaming bows 
Wind up the Narrows towards Gallipoli. 

No colour breaks this tongue of barren land 
Save where a group of huddled tents gleams white ; 

Before me ugly shapes like spectres stand, 
And wooden crosses cleave the waning light. 

Celestial gardeners speed the hurrying day 
And sow the plains of night with silver grain ; 

So shall this transient havoc fade away 
And the proud cape be beautiful again. 

8 B 2 



FROM "W" BEACH 

Laden with figs and olives, or a freight 

Of purple grapes, tanned singing men shall row. 

Chanting wild songs of how Eternal Fate 
Withstood that fierce invasion long ago. 



A PRAYER 

Lord, keep him near to me : 

Revive his image, let my darkening sight 

Renew his life by deafh intensified 

(His beating life so pitifully tried) 

That we may face the night 

And shade the agony. 

We pray in barren stress 

Where stricken men await the shrill alarm 

And nightly watch, in silent order set, 

The beckoning stars enshrine the parapet. 

Lord, keep his soul from harm 

And grant him happiness. 

When all the world is free. 

And, cleansed and purified by floods of pain 

We turn, and see the light in human eyes ; 

When the last echo of War's thunder dies ; 

Lord, let us pause again 

In silent memory. 

Gallipoli, October, 1915. 



FALLEN 

The days shall darken and sink down to Night, 
And Night shall break in the bleak dawn of Day : 
The years shall dim his face, our fleeting sight 
Shall see his splendid image fade away 
Beyond the knowledge of our drifting thought 
Which moves in circles to the source again. 
Beyond dark seas with shivering stars inwrought 
Beyond war-burdened men in stricken pain. 

I searched in rage and passionate despair 

Down winding paths of thought, and comradeless 

In the full sui^e and tumult where he died 

I turned ; and saw my Brother standing there. 

His face was like a dawning happiness — 

I saw wounds in his hands, his feet, his side. 

Gallipoli, October, 1915. 



THE TURKISH TRENCH DOG 

Night held me as I crawled and scrambled near 
The, Turkish lines. Above, the mocking stars 
Silvered the curving parapet, and clear 
Cloud-latticed beams o'erflecked the land with bars 
I, crouching, lay between 

Tense-listening armies peering through the night, 
Twin giants bound by tentacles unseen. 
Here in dim-shadowed light 
I sa-vv him, as a sudden movement turned 
His eyes towards me, glowing eyes that burned 
A moment ere his snuffling muzzle found 
My trail ; and then as serpents mesmerise 
He chained me with those unrelenting eyes, 
That muscle-sliding rhythm, knit and bound 
In spare-limbed symmetry, those perfect jaws 
And soft-approaching pitter-patter paws. 
Nearer and nearer like a wolf he crept — 
That moment had my swift revolver leapt — 
7 



THE TURKISH TRENCH DOG 

But terror seized me, terror born of shame 
Brought flooding revelation. For he came 
As one who offers comradeship deserved, 
An open ally of the human race. 
And sniffing at my prostrate form unneiA-^ed 
He licked my face ! 



THE SENTINL'L 

An Episode at the Evacuation of GallipoU. 

He stood enveloped in the darkening mist 
High on the jcape that proudly kept her tryst 
Above the narrow portal. All the day 
White shell-flung water-spouts had scattered spray 
Round Helles, warden of the Eastern seas ; 
And still the boom of Asian batteries 
Rumbled around the cape. The sentinel 
Spied from his high cliff-towered citadel 
The leaping flash of guns ; but ere the roar 
Sprang from its den on the dim Asian shore, 
He blew a trumpet. Then, like burrowing moles, 
Dim forms below dashed headlong to their holes, 
The while that hurtling iron crossed the sea. 
And fifteen seconds seemed eternity. 

Below we lay 
Crushed in a lighter ; and the towering spray 
That lately blurred the clear star-laden sea 
Subsided in the vast tranquillity. 
9 



THE SENTINEL 

Now, chafing like taut-muscled charioteers 
With every sense on tiptoe, we strained ears 
For whispers, or the catch of indrawn breath. 
Still not the word to cut adrift the rope 
That moored us to a wharf of floating piers : 
And thus alternately in fear and hope 
Swung the grim pendulum of life and death. 

Then suddenly the sound 

Of that loud warning rang the cape around. 

We knew a gun had flashed, we knew the roar 

That instant rumbled from the Asian shore ; 

And we lie fettered to a raft ! . . . The shell 

Climbs its high trajectory . . . Well, 

What of it ? Fifteen seconds less or more 

One — two — three — four — five — six — seven 

(Steady, man, 

It's only Asiatic Ann) . . . 

How slow the moments trickle — eight — nine — ten 

(They're wonderful, these men). 

Am I a coward ? I can count no more ; 

Hold Thou my hands, O God. 

The sea, upheaved in anger, rocked and swirled ; 
Niagara seemed pelting from the stars 
10 



THE SENTINEL 

In tumult that epitomised a world 
Roused by the battling impotence of wars. 
We heard a whispered order to escape, 
And casting loose, incredulously free. 
Unscathed, exulting in the amber light 
We left behind the inimemorial cape. 

But still above the indomitable sea 

From his high cliff a sentry watched the night 



11 



MUDROS AFTER THE EVACUATION 

I LAUGHED to see the gulls that dipped to cling 

To the torn edge of surf and blowing spray, 

\Vhere some gaunt battleship, a rolling king, 

Still dreams of phantom battles in the bay. 

I saw a cloud, a full-blown cotton flower 

Drift vaguely like a wandering butterfly, 

I laughed to think it bore no pregnant shower 

Of blijiding shrapnel scattered from the sky. 

Life bore new hope. An army's great release 

From a closed cage walled in by fire and sea, 

From the hushed pause and swooping plunge of shells, 

Sped in a night. Here children in strange peace, 

Seek solitude to dull the tragedy, 

And needless horror of the Dardanelles. 

Mudros, January, 1916. 



12 



THE DEAD TURK 

Dead, dead, and dumbly chill. He seemed to 

Carved from the earth, in beauty without staiii 

And suddenly 

Day turned to night, and I i)eheld again 

A still Centurion with eyes ablaze : 

And Calvary re-echoed with his cry — 

His cry of stark amaze. 



13 



II 

B. E. F. 



MISSING 

They told me nothing more : I bow my head 
And squander life, between the quick and dead 
Irresolute. Yet I again could be 
Mistress of life, Queen of my destiny, 
If I but knew — 'But now Remembrance plays 
My being back through spring and siunmer dayi 
We passed together ; and I see him still 
Swinging to meet me down the tardy hill. 
That day the birds were new-inspired ; a breeze 
Bestirred, as if in wonderment, the trees ; 
The very clouds paused in their breathless race, 
And shadows played upon his open face ; 
And I remember how his laughing eyes 
Shone deep as pools in sea-blue ecstasies. 
The meadow grasses rustled in the heat ; 
I even heard the silence of his feet 
Down the slow hill — ^And now the dawning birth 
17 C 



MISSING 

Of beauty woke my senses to the earth 
Unveiled in radiance. The sweepmg skies — 
Unseen unless reflected in his eyes — 
Marshalled cloud companies with new delight ; 
3\iBt for us two the spangled dome of night 
Swung out thQ journeying moon. 

But still I hold 
Burnt in my memory in beaten gold 
Days when the Spring stirred in each waking bush 
A blue-flecked jay or tawny-feathered thrush, 
And drowsy Winter, startled unawares 
By arc-winged partridges or listening hares, 
Fled guiltily. We heard the magpies call — 
Those dominoes at Nature's carnival — 
And once a kingfisher, a lovely gleam 
Snatched from a rainbow, dartied to a stream. 
The snowdrops bowed their heads for us to see 
Shy peeping buds of hooded chastity ; 
And stalwart cowslips raised sun-glinted eyes 
To those who stooped to pluck their sanctities. 
Grass-nestled crocuses that scorn the wind 
Speared upward proudly and besought mankind 
To step with care. Near by, we searched a glade 
Where violets brood in sweetness, half afraid 
18 



MISSING 

To wake their petals. On we roamed, and soon 
The flower that shares her secret with the moon 
In pale gold fellowship peeped out, among 
A host of truculent daffodils that flung 
Their trumpets down the wind. 

Each breathless day 
Broke to fulfil its promise, till the May 
Had fledged her clustered blooms and swung her pride 
In bowing sweetness to the coimtry side. 
Beauty was born again. But now the sound 
Of heavy Autmnn patters to the ground. 
And loud discordant booms of thunder roll 
Where that enchanted owner of my soul 
Lies dead, or dying, or is living still : 
At last the fibres of my struggling will 
Falter exhausted, and my cowering brain 
Cries out in anguish like a child in pain. 

If he is dead, then I abide to prove 

That brief fulfilment may be perfect love. 

How should I grieve ? His life inspired in me 

A joy that shall outUve eternity, 

Wrought out, complete, unsnared by time and age 

My jewelled past my priceless heritage. 

19 C 2 



MISSING 

Shall misery usurp my realm of years 

And leave me drowning in self-pitying tears, 

A derelict in my own whirlpool swirled — 

)M[e — ^whom Love crowned an empress of the world ? 

But sometimes 'ere the light 
Glimmers dawn-pearled to splash the feet of night. 
Ere red, sun-gilded riot floods the sky, 
A whisper, swelling to a ringing cry. 
Tells me he's living still. No lash could sting 
Like this persistent voice re-echoing 
That mocks me as I stumble to my feet. 
O, shall I find him wandering in the street ? 
But every beckoning corner drags me past 
Strangers, new faces, each one like the last 
Dull, cold, inscrutable. At times I caught 
The look — ^the walk — the gesture that I sought ; 
And once with throbbing veins I foimd those eyes 
That shone like pools in sea-blue ecstasies, 
But looked beyond me— cold expressionless 
In vacant wonder at my helplessness. 

Then, haunted by that stare, 
Beaten, I knew the bedrock of despair. 
O, Thou who poised the world, are all my tears 
Too light, too pitiful to reach Thine ears ? 
20 



MISSING 

Locksmith of happiness, aloof, apartj 
Am I too impotent to touch Thine heart ? 
Tell me he's dead or dying ; say he stands 
Seeking for guidance the warm touch of hands, 
Doomed in an instant to eternal night, 
With only mind and memory for sight — 
For I could cheer him. 

But Lord quench this drought, 
The unfathomable immensity of doubt. 
Tell me he^s maimed or crippled, torn or blind, 
Staring through eyes that show his wandering mind — 
Tell me he's rotting in a place abhorred, — 
Not this, not this, O Lord ! 



21 



TWO TRENCH POEMS 



THE STORM NIGHT 

Peal after peal of splitting thunder rolls 
(Still roar the howling guns, and star-shells rise) 
We perish, drowned in anger-blasted holes, 
Give ear, O Lord ! Our very manhood cries, 
Shell-fodder yea — but spare our human souls 
From fury-shaken skies ! 



32 



II 

RESURRECTION 

Five million men are dead. How can the worth 

Of all the world redeem such waste as this ? 

And yet the spring is clamorous of birth, 

And whispering in winter's chrysalis 

Glad tidings to each clod, each particle of earth. 

So the year's Easter triumphs. Shall we then 

Mourn for the dead unduly, and forget 

The resurrection in the hearts of men ? 

Even the poppy on the parapet 

Shall blossom as before when Summer blows again. 



28 



GOMMECOURT 



The wind, which heralded the blackening night, 
Swirled in grey mists the sulphur-laden smoke. 
From sleep, in sparkling instancy of light, 
Crouched batteries like grumbling tigers woke 
And stretched their iron symmetry ; they hurled 
Skyward with roar and boom each pregnant shell 
Rumbling on tracks unseen. Such tyrants reign 
The sullen masters of a mangled world, 
Grim-mothered in a womb of furnaced hell, 
Wrought, forged, and hammered for the work of pain. 

For six long days the common slayers played, 
Till, fitfully, there boomed a heavier king, 
Who, couched in leaves and branches deftly laid, 
And hid in dappled colour of the spring, 
Vaunted tornadoes. Far from that covered lair. 
Like hidden snares the sinuous trenches lay 
Mid fields where nodding poppies show their pride. 
24 



GOIMMECOURT 

The tall star-pointed streamers leap and flare, 
And turn the night's immensity to day ; 
Or rockets whistle in their upward ride. 

II 

The moment comes when thrice-embittered fire 
Proclaims the prelude to the great attack. 
In ruined heaps, torn saps and tangled wire 
And battered parapets loom gaunt and black : 
The flashes fade, the steady rattle dies, 
A breathless hush brings forth a troubled day, 
And men of sinew, knit to charge and stand, 
Rise up. But he of words and blinded eyes 
Applauds the puppets of his ghastly play, 
With easy rhetoric and ready hand. 

Unlike those men who waited for the word. 
Clean soldiers from a country of th6 sea ; 
These were no thong-lashed band or goaded herd 
Tricked by the easy speech of tyranny. 
All the long week they fought encircling Fate, 
While chaos clutched the throat and shuddered past 
As phantoms haunt a child, and softly creep 
Round cot^, so Death stood sentry at the Gate 
25 



GOMMECOURT 

And beckoned waiting terror, till at last 
He vanished at the hurrying touch of sleep., 

The beauty of the Earth seemed doubly sweet 
With the stored sacraments the Summer yields — 
Grass-sunken kine, and softly-hissing wheat, 
Blue-misted flax, apd drowsy poppy fields. 
But with the vanished day Remembrance came 
Vivid with dreams, and s\yeet with magic song, 
Soft haunting echoes of a distant sea 
As from another world. A belt of flame 
Held the swift past, 'and made each moment long 
With the tense horror of mortality. 

That easy lordling of the Universe 
Who plotted days that stain the path of time, 
For him was happy memory a curse, 
And Man a scapegoat for a royal crime. 
In lagging moments dearly sacrificed 
Men sweated blood before eternity : 
In cheerful agony, with jest and mirth, 
They shared the bitter solitude of Christ 
In a new Garden of Gethsemane, 
Gethsemane walled in by crested earth. 
26 



GOMMECOURT 

They won the greater battle, when each soul 

Lay naked to the needless wreck of Mars ; 

Yet, splendid in perfection, faced the goal 

Beyond the sweeping army of the stars. 

Necessity foretold that they must die 

Mangled and helpless, crippled, maimed and blmd, 

And cutsed with all the sacrilege of war — 

To force a nation to retract a lie. 

To prove the unchartered honour of Mankind, 

To show how strong the silent passions are. 



Ill 

The daylight broke and brought the awaited cheer, 
And suddenly the land is live with men. 
In steady waves the infantry surge near ; 
The fire, a sweeping curtain, lifts again. 
A battle-plane with humming engines swerves. 
Gleams like a whirring dragon-fly, and dips. 
Plunging cloud-shadowed in a breathless fall 
To climb undaunted in far-reaching curves. 
And, swaying in the clouds like anchored ships, 
Swing grim balloons with eyes that fathom all. 
2Y 



GOMMECOURT 

But as the broad-winged battle-planes outsoared 

The shell-rocked skies, blue fields of cotton flowers, 

When bombs like bolts of thunder leapt and roared, 

And mighty moments faded into hours, 

The curtain fire redoubled yet again : 

The gTey defence reversed their swift defeat 

And rallied strongly ; whilst the attacking waves, 

Snared in a trench and severed from the main, 

Were driven fighting in a forced retreat 

Across the land that gaped with shell-turned graves. 



IV 



The troubled day sped on in weariness 
Till Night drugged Carnage in a drunken swoon. 
Jet-black, with spangling stars athwart her dress 
And pale in the shafted amber of the moon, 
She moved triumphant as a young-eyed queen 
In silent dignity : her shadowed face 
Scarce veiled by gossamer clouds, that scurrying ran 
Breathless in speed the high star-lanes between. 
She passed unheeding 'neath the dome of space, 
And scorned the petty tragedy of Man. 
28 



GOMMECOURT 

And one looked upward, and in wonder saw 

The vast star-soldiered army of the sky. 

Unheard, the needless blasphemy of War 

Shrank at that primal splendour sweeping by. 

The moon's gold-shadowed craters bathed the ground — 

(Pale queen, she hunted in her pathless rise 

Lithe blackened raiders that bomb-laden creep) 

But now the earth-walled comfort wrapped him round, 

And soon in lulled forgetfutness he lies 

Where soldiers clasping arms like children sleep. 

Sleep held him as a mother holds her child : 
Sleep the soft calm that levels hopes and fears, 
Now stilled his brain and scarfed his eyelids wild, 
And sped the transient misery of tears, 
Until the dawn's sure prophets cleft the night 
With opal shafts, and streamers tinged with flame, 
Swift merging riot of the turbaned East. 
Through rustling gesture loomed the advancing light ; 
Through fitful eddying winds, grey vanguards came 
Rising in billowy mountains silver- fleeced. 

And with the dawn came action, and again 
The spiteful interplay of static war : 
20 



GOMMECOURT 

Dogged, with grim persistence Blood and Pain 
Rose venomous to greet the Morning Star. 
But others watched that lonely sentinel 
Chase fleeting fellow-stars before the day ; 
Fresh men heard tides of thunder ebb and flow. 
— Stumbling in sleep, scarce heeding shot or shell. 
The men who fought at Gk>mmecourt filed away : 
The poppies nodded as they passed below. 

They left the barren wilderness behind, 

And Gommecourt gnarled and dauntless, till they 

came 
To fields where trees imshatlered took the wind. 
Which tossed the crimson poppy heads to flame. 
But one stood musing at a waking thought 
That spurred his blood and dunmed his searching 

eyes — 
The primal thought that stirs the seed to birth. 
Here where the battling nations clashed and fought 
The common grass still breathed of Paradise 
And Love with silent lips was Lord of Earth. 

B. £. F. Idl6. 



A VISION 

Before the dawn-wind swept the troubled sky 
And stirred the stricken trenches far and wide, 

I saw the Lord of Holiness pass by, 
With Mary at His side. 

With Mary Michael passed, ior I could hear 
His clashing arms, and see his spangled sword. 

Loudly I cried out, " Mother ! " then in fear, 
" O Mother of our Lord." 

For in her eyes all human sorrow burned. 
All tenderness lay naked when she smiled ; 

And once she stooped to kiss, and once she turned 
And shuddered like a child. 

He moved through all the surge and clash of war. 
The King of Kings since Brotherhood began ; 

But in His still and shadowed face I saw 
The agony of Man. 

81 



A VISION 

And as I gazed, the ruined fields of France 
Loomed to the dawn in shades of shifting grey ; 

Dumbly I stood to arms, as in a trance 
I watched the climbing day. ' 

Was this a dream ? Yet Mary saw the sky» 
Lit by a vision from the darkness hurled ; 

A Httle dream which made -a baby cry — 
A dream which saved the world. 



82 



REVELATION 

Can death give you such dignity, and pride 
So beautiful it puts our grief to shame ? 
For now we stumble as we speak your name, 
Yet you were just a boy before you died. 
We question blankly, pondering heavy-eyed, 
Can this be he we used to praise or blame 
In careless moments, ere the trial came 
When all the bravest hearts in anguish cried ? 
Then, humbled, we beheld our poor disguise, 
False moods and manners clothed in empty speech 
Which drowned the silence — till there came a day 
That smote our vision to awakened eyes : 
For God bent down to bring you to our reach, 
But ere we touched you, you had gone away. 



33 



TELL ME, STRANGER 

Tell me, Stranger, is it true 
There is magic happening, 

Are all the dappled fields of Kew 
Bowing to their Lord the Spring ? 

Are the bluebells chaste and mute 
Dancing in each dale and hollow 

Dew-sprinkled, with a glad salute 
To omnipotent Apollo ? 

Tell me, do the feathered creatures 
Flutter as in days of yore. 

What are the " distinctive features " 
Of the Swallow's Flying Corps ? 

Here there is no magic. Stranger, 
Save within our merry souls — 

For some wanton god in anger 
Punches earth with gaping holes. 
84 



TELL ME, STRANGER 

Yet the stifled land is showing 
Here and there a touch of grace, 

And the marshalled clouds are blowing 
Through the aerodromes of space. 

Hate is strong, but Love is stronger, 
And the world shall wake to birth 

When the touch of man no longer 
Stays the touch of God from Earth. 

Tell me, Stranger, is it true 
There is magic happening, 

Are all the dappled fields of Kew 
Bowing to their Lord the Spring ? 

B. E. F., April, 1917. 



8S D 2 



SPRING IN THE TRENCHES 

The racing clouds have borne her message down 
And blown a thrilling rumour, from the far 
Heart-centres of each crowded port and town. 
And up the flowing arteries of War. 
Life, life, green tales of corn in sprouting blades. 
Of swallows crowding with sea-sprinkled wings 
And ash-buds amber-gummed round close-furled 

green. 
High blossom mantling murmurous orchard glades 
In air a-tingle April -sweet and keen — 
Ah, we have heard of wondrous happenings. 

For new the magic carnivals begin 
The lilac broods in honeyed secrecy. 
And dappled lawns are changed : a Harlequin 
Has brushed the tangled carpet silently. 
86 



SPRING IN THE TRENCHES 

We know how white narcissus fills the lake 
With dancing shadows ; how in open blue 
A chestnut builds her clustered pyramids, 
And down below anemones awake ; 
Long-hushed the violets open wide their lids 
And all the dreamed-of fantasy comes true. 

Glad tidings thrill the re-awakened earth 
By daffodils and blue-bells heralded ^ 
Spring with her van imperial comes forth 
To herald Summer proudly canopied 
Beneath the bowing leaves. Persistent Spring 
Bestirs the seed enshrined in Winter's store ; 
And even round the parapet a breath 
Of far-flung prophecy is clamouring ; 
" Behold new life within the tomb of death 
" Importunate and vivid as before." 



87 



ON THE ROAD 

We halted, with the urgent Spring behind 

Our straining teams, where all the land was black, 

And huddled woods lay beaten, starkly blind : 

Their mangled branches loomed athwart the track 

Grotesque and terrible. Yet near the "way, 

A river, scatheless as th6 opefit sea. 

Flowed like a breathing hope that cannot die 

In desolation. Now, at setting day. 

Moored water lilies, pale as argent sky. 

Cling to the twilight fading silently. 

Sucli is the tale of memory, ere night 
Had deepened, and our weary convoy slept 
Beside the way. Slow-rising points of light 
Twinkled amid the spangled netting swept 
Across the ebon desert ; and a gleam 
Pierced the cloud-woven pillows of the moon. 
88 



ON THE ROAD 

Now slumber freed me from the iron cage 
That bound the snarling war ; and, in a dream, 
The panorama of a dawning age 
Unrolled, a world slow-waking from a swoon. 

Before my gaze a teeming city loomed 

Gay with the bustling clamour of the street — 

The very town an easy word had doomed 

And cast in ashes at the trampling feet 

Of mortal gods. Street, corner, square and place, 

Seemed woken from a long and squalid trance — 

I saw a nation growing like a flower ; 

A nation true and loyal to a race 

That forged an army of clean-soldiered power 

Wrought by the common chivalry of France. 

Here was no arrogance of martial pride. 
The fireside boast that sows the fatal seed, 
For happiness had come from those who died 
Stark of delusion and the deadly creed 
Of false romance. I saw a world reborn — 
The very battlefield was robed again 
In lines of chequered land, and bordered round 
With stretching roads and rills. The poppied corn 
3d 



ON THE ROAD 

Held rubies set in gold, and far beyond 
Lay a surf -ravelled sea and swarded plain. 

I marvelled, till oblivion shadowed all, 

Kurred in the dawning light of every day. 

It was so true, I scarcely heard the call 

To feed and water and to move away. 

We stretched our limbs, and packed each heavy 

load ; 
Moved on, and left tiie weary night behind, 
Through torn and withered trees that stared aghast ; 
Yet, through the veil that shrouded all the road 
I saw new radiance in the land we passed, 
And heard a sudden murmur in the wind. 

B. E. F., 1017. 



40 



KEATS, BEFORE ACTION 

A LITTLE moment more — O, let me hear 

(The thunder rolls above, and star-shells fall) 

Those melodies unheard re-echo clear 

Before the shuddering moment closes all. 

They come — they come — they answer to my call, 

That Grecian throng of graven ecstasies, 

Hyperion aglow in blazing skies, 

And Cortez with the wonder in his eyes. 

In battle-wreaths of smoke they rise, and fall 

Beyond — beyond recall. 

Now all is silent, still, and magic-keen 
(Yet thunder rolls above and star-shells fall) 
And slowly pacing, rides a faery queen 
Wild eyed and singing to a knight in thraU. 
Enough — enough — let lightning whip me bare 
And leave me naked in the howling air 
My body broken here, and here, and here. 
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — ^that is all, 
Tlie very all m all. 



THE SOMME 

From, Amiens to Abbeville 

My swollen waters race. 
And silver-veined by many a rill 

Green hamlets thrive apace. 
From Amiens to Abbeville 

I labour at the listless mill, 
And tempt the nodding daffodil 

To blur my open face. 
But south of Amiens I flow 

Past dumb Peronne and Brie, 
The peopled land I used to know 

Now all belongs to me. 
Yet phantom armies come and go. 

And shadows hurry to and fro ; 
Again my seething battles grow 

In murdered Picardy. 

Behold the mother of a soil forlorn ; 
I suckled towns, and fed the forest land, 
Behold my shattered villages and mourn 
How should I understand ? 
42 



THE SOMME 

Why are those huts o'erpatched like dappled kine, 

What are thc^e weary men in blue and brown, 

And humming craft that search my sinuous line ; 

Why should my name re-echo with renown 

Past every phantom town ? 

But still my lily-breasted waters shme. 

And still I chant my shadowy ripples down* 

From peace through war my waters flow> 

To peace again at sea, 
The peopled land I used to know 

Now all belongs to me. 
Though battling armies come and go, 
I toil and spin, I reap and sow. 
And poppy-mantled meadows blow 

In murdered Picardy. 

My eddies bear the clinging scent of lime 
To sweeten clouds of plume-tossed meadowsweet ; 
My meadow grasses nestle with the thyme 
And flowering rushes tower in the heat. 
Low-brushing swifts and swallows splashed with white 
O'er flash my laden mirrors slow and deep 
That bear swift>merging canopies of sleep, 
^3 



THE SOMME 

Until the growing light 

Has chased marauding owls,, and butterSies, 

Born of blue-woven skies, 

Flutter away like hare-bells spurred to flight. 

But who are these ? The powdered butterfly 

Outshines that air leviathan that swings 

In rigid curves adown the barren sky, 

With cloudy satellites about her wings. 

And I have seen 

Dark horsemen ride with spears of tapered steel ; 

And bellowing guns beneath th^ far balloons. 

And once a ponderous slug bedecked in green 

Crept, in the waning moon's 

Still- darkening gloom, and at her giant heel 

White-gleaming, ran a train of hooded cars . . . 

I triumph, triumph, search my sinuous line 

Amid the snarling impotence of wars. 

Turn where you will. Look, there a signboard 

shows 
The lair of guns ; already round the sign 
White trumpeting convolvuli entwine 
Their clinging arms, across the placard blows 
A quiet-breathing rose. 

44 



THE SOMME 

Attd still my lily-breasted waters shine 
And loud my chanting grows : 

Firom peace through war my waters flo 

To peace again at sea, 
The peopled land I used to know 

Now all belongs to me. 
Though battling armies come and go 
t toil and spin, I reap and sow, 
And poppy-mantled meadows blow 

In murdered Picardy. 



40 



30MME FLOWER TALK 

Said the Cornflower to the Pimpernel, 

" O sudden scarlet eyes, 
You never bloomed till ploughing shell 

I^aid bare earth's sanctities ! " 

Then upward cried the Pimpernel : 
" Blue head in deeper blue, 

'Tis strange this former waste of Hell 
Is Paradise anew. 

" But who is Lord of Paradise 
And Commandant ; and who 
Commands sky-faring butterflies 
All camouflaged in blue ? 

" Are dandelion parachutes 
His messages, and do 
Those armoured beetles clamber roots 
With news from Army Q ? 
4G 



vSOMME FLOWER TALK 

*' Above each water-lily ship 
The feathered red caps pipe. 
Because the pear has earned a pip, 
The tiger-moth a stripe. 

** The gorse artillery has eyes 
We never knew before. 
And lady bees can organise 
The Honey Service Corps. 

** Field-marshals rule the war behind 
The guns, but Summer shields 
Here in the clash of human kind 
Her marshal of the fields." 



4T 



TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING. 

" He too I He too ! '* The veteran paused, the sound 
Of a h'ght paper fluttering to the ground 
Rustled the twilight peace. •' He — too — is — dead — '* 
His wife, scarce faltering from the words she read, 
Stared at the glowing sun, the while her eyes 
Shone mistily in nameless agonies. 
Five sons, and four were dead I 
The clock ticked desolation to their ears 
And silence gripped the moments as they passed 
Too terrible, too passionless for tears. 
At last, 

Stronger than he, she curbed herself and smiled 
And held him weeping like a weary child 
Before the first immensity of pain. 
Yet once again 

She conjured scenes beyond the darkened cloud 
That blurred the soul's horizon, as aloud 
48 



TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 

She spoke his jiame, and whispered little things 
More pregnant th?in the utterance of kings. 

That night she moved, 

Spurred by devotion for the man she loved, 

Without a pause for sorrow, or a breath 

To murmur at the closing walls of death ; 

Love-steeled and queenly every step she trod ; 

She climbed unfaltering, serenely browed, 

Until she touched the very feet of God 

Undaunted and unbowed. 

And there in mystic awe 

Slow-turning wheels of evolution spun 

The poised and pulsing universe. She saw 

All life and death synonymous, and birth 

The dawn of human wonderment begun 

(Birth of all birth) in other realms afar. 

Below, ice-pivoted revolved the earth, 

A traveller's joy it seemed, a mile-stone star, 

Half-glowing, bathed in sun . . . 

At dawn they met and found each other's eyes, 
Asked the same questions, sought the same replies : 
Their last and youngest fought where harsh com- 
mands 

49 E 



TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 

Still goaded forward lashed and driven bands^. 

Where Vaux arid Thiaumont twin sentmels 

Loomed stalwartly. And still a howl of shells 

Shattered the Verdun battlements, in vain ; 

Still domineered that keen death-tutored brain 

Behind an army deaf to angry scorn, 

The boast forgotten and the mask outworn. 

At length she spoke : " Go quickly now," she said, 

** Quick, the next hurrying hour may see him dead. 

Find the Great Overlord and tell, him all 

Quick, for ouif boy may pass beyond recall 

Meanwhile. He shall know happiness to come, 

He, the last scion of our stricken home. 

Shall bloissom like a flower in early Spring 

I say it, I who bore him. Time shall bring 

The old primeval happiness to birth 

If there be any justice upon earth." 

She ceased ; it seemed her voice re-echoed still 

As strung with hope he hurried on until 

He reached the palace and besought for grace 

To see his royal master face to face. 

That night in sudden joy he urged away 
Across Lorraine, for in his wallet lay 
SO 



TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 

An order blazoned with the xoyal seals. 
Hour after hour the ear's revolving wheels 
Rushed dizzily toward^ the high command 
That held his son in fee. Around, the land 
Awoke in changeless Spring. Fom* steady hours 
They travelled, till the bloom of passing flowers 
Brought tidings of the dawn. Then to his ears 
Rumbled a distant thunder, sudden fears 
Urged onward faster. Now the country showed 
First signs of war-flung tentacles, the road 
Lay pitted here and there, a wounded tree 
No longer framed its lordly symmetry. 
And soon the land whereon all life was stilled 
Became as Man had willed. 
At last his journey ended. Long delayed 
He sought his goal, now pressing on, now stayed. 
Until outside the place of high command 
The royal warrant burning in his hand 
He knocked — was bidden enter — tense and mute 
He faced the marshal with a grave salute 
And showed the royal word. 
The crowded room was silent, no man stirred — 
A pause as long as death, then, dragged and slow, 
A voice — " Your son was killed an hour ago." 
51 ]£ 2. 



TO THE UTTERMOST FARTHING 

A clock importunately unconcerned 

Repeated tick — ^tick — ^tick. His eyes discerned 

A pen vague-spyawling, madly spiderwise. 

Not a man glanced — Yet all the room had eyes : 

Not a man spoke^— Yet clamorous voices cried : 

Stiunbling, he walked outside. 



62 



IN THE MESS 

I SAT alone although the mess 
Was full, when — quick as tears 
A song of naked happiness 
Came singing in my ears. 

I summoned strength to kill a cry 
And mad desire to weep ; 
Then, glancing round me guiltily, 
Foimd everyone asleep ! 



58 



A TRENCH INCIDENT 

We waited, as the thundering curtain swept 
Our sector, and torn shards of iron fell ; 
Dust from the parapet in showers leapt 
Swirled up by bursting shell. 

We waited, like a storm-bespattered ship 
That flutters sail to free her grounded keel ; 
The tingling moments tightened every grip 
On rifles lanced with steel. . 

We knew the man who led us. All could hear 
His ringing voice re-echo loud and strong, 
Born of that higher bravery when fear 
Is battled into song. 

Then sudden fury lulled and far behind 
Like angered beasts our batteries replied — 
And suddenly he stumbled, dazed and blind. 
He lay, but ere he died 

He struggled for a while, then dimly smiled, 
Wrapped in the comradeship of happy things, 
Before he entered like a wondering child 
The heritage of kings. 

R4, 



REALITY 

Below my room the noise and measured beat 
Of marching men re-echoed loud and clear ; 
Now bobbing cavalry swung down the street ; 
Now mules and rumbling batteries drew near. 
But all is dim — The rolling wagon-stream 
To Amiens between the aspen trees, 
The stables, billets, men and horses, seem 
Dead mummers of forgotten fantasies. 

Only my dreams are still aglow, a throng 
Of scenes that crowded through a waiting mind 
A myriad scenes : For I have swept along 
To foam ashriek with gulls, and rowed behind 
Brown oarsmen swinging to an ocean song 
Where stately galleons bowed before the wind. 



5i 



" WE POETS OF THE PROUD OLD LINEAGE '» 

Apart we labour, and alone we climb 
The barren heights ; for we the singing throng 
Whose lives were hallowed by impassioned song 
Must die or prove unworthy of our rhyme. 
Man after man — we know the price of wars 
Who watched the mask of Night whilst others slept. 
And spread our laughter far and wide, but kept 
Our tears and terror privy to the stars. 

O magic gift omnipotent, to sing 

And conjure Heaven from surrounding Hell. 

Our lips and eyes are touched (for we have seen 

Celestial weavers at the loom of Spring). 

But O the iron bitterness and keen 

Of voices ever clamouring farewell ! 



50 



Ill 

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



SONG 

Would I could commandeer the bees 
To hum you droning symphonies. 
I love the climbing thoughts that rise 
To the sheer heaven of your eyes, 
Wide laughter-dromes of wondering blue, 
Yes, yes, I do ! 

But when I sing of bubbling seas, 
The zephyr-clapping hands of trees 
Applauding in tumultuous skies, 
Or window-winged dragonflies. 
Or anything that's good and true 

I sing of you — 

Yes, yes, I do ! 



89 



THE SHADOW 

I STOOD one night where rivers pause to meet 
And mingle in the traffic-rumbling sea : 
The surge and clamour of a London street. 
In tides alternate, rolled impassively. 
Before my feet 

Ban shouting boys, and through the pallid glare 
Loomed gaunt leviathans that swayed and roared 
Past glittering shops, and stations which outpoured 
Load after weary load ; and everjrwhere 
Strange sounds, a snatch of laughter, shout or word, 
Sleek-coated motor-cars that softly ptured 
Round corners sounding with the rustling beat 
Of hurried swarms of feet. 
And yet I seemed alone, and dumb-amazed 
Before a towering building, whercm blazed 
One stating patch of light, one amber square 
llMt shcme enshrouded by the dome of night 
60 



THE SHADOW 

High in the naked air. And still I gazed 

Until a shadow passed across the blind : 

A shadow-woman pacing time away 

Beside a bed, wherein a poet lay 

Dying, dying. One w^hose mind 

(A womb of beauty whereof love was lord) 

Had fashioned symphonies of thought and word 

Impassionately sweet. And suddenly 

She paused — I saw the shadow of her hand 

Stretch out and shudder back. I saw her stand 

All sorrow-bound in graven dignity. 

She bowed her head, her shoulders taut with pain, 

Her figure burdened with the weight of tears. 

Then all grew dark. And in my waking ears 

The tra£Rc surged again. 



61 



EVERYCHILD 

We take you through Pacific seas 

To islands strange and new, 
Where howling monkeys scale the trees 
Alive with humming-birds and bees, 
Where shiny seals and porpoises 
Snort in the rolling blue. 

Then quicker than a shaft of light 

We shear the arctic foam, 
And lounging bears of polar white 
Roar loudly through the dancing night, 
And drive the killer- whales to flight — 

Upon the floor at home. 

O hear the chant of Eastern song 

Beneath Arabian stars, 
Wliere camels slowly stalk along 
And gleaming Arabs, tall and strong. 
Buy gold and merchandise among 

The riot of bazaars I 
62 



EVERYCHILD 

The glow-worms crawl excitedly 

And trim tlieir lamps o' night ; 
For often, ere the moon is high, 
Bat-harnessed walnut-shells flit by 
To bear them to the waiting sky 
And set the stars alight. 

The nodding poplars understand 
And birds and beasts and flowers : 

And we shall wander hand in hand 

With better things than Peter Panned- 

O what is footlight fairyland 
Beside this world of ours ? 

What matter if the clouds are grey 

Or winter-keen and wild, 
When you and I have foimd a way 
To turn November into May ; 
For Everyjoy is Everyday 

And Everyman a child. 



68 



CHILD OF THE FLOWING TIDB 

Away to the call of the racing sea-- 

(Child of thfe flowing tide) 
A hundred chargers of ivory, 
And two of them saddled for you and for me, 
Are pawing and stamping the surf to be free 

Where the wild sea-horses ride. 
The deep water shall roar as we race from the shore 

On the back of the flowing tide. 

hurry, the moon is away ia the sky 

(Child of the flowing tide) 
With your heels well down, aad your heart set high 
You^re saddled and bridled, and so am I ; 
So gather your reins, for the foam will fly 

Where the wild sea-horses ride. 
Grip tight with your knees as you gallop the seas 

On the back of the flowing tide. 
64 



CHILD OF THE FLOWING TIDE 

On the wide lagoon I'll meet you to-night 

(Child of the flowing tide) 
When the moon swings high and the stars are alight 
And the roaring sea-chargers are ready to fight : 
Their manes are all foam and their coats are all white 

Where the wild sea-horses ride. 
The deep waters shall roar as we race from the shore 

On the back of the flowing tide 



W 



EIGHT SONNETS 

I 

I TREMBLE at the outset, for I know 

How rhythm halts and rhyme rings falsely true. 

Yet courage, your disciple, bids me show 

That speech may offer sacrifice to you. 

Vain boast ! For if success in splendour came 

Poised faultlessly in lines of perfect stress, 

I must fall short of it in very shame 

Unworthy of my sonnet's worthiness. 

But should I fail, and feel the words I sought 
Elusive, or bedecked with frail disguise 
Of tattered sentiment, that risk I dare 
Not hazard in the winding maze of thought, 
Lest I should stir the wonder in your eyes 
Or wind a little tangle in your hair. 
66 



EIGHT SONNETS 



11 

So let me fail : what matter if the wise 

And worldly whisper, who so poor as they ? 

For everywhere alike the common way 

Has now become an earthly paradise. 

And where you walk the very pavement cries 

Of blue-bells, April-chimed, and fawns at play ; 

And London seems a sylvan holiday 

Of flower-hunting bees and butterflies. 

So let me fail, for where I could succeed 
How mean the quest, a climber gazing down 
From the low vantage of some petty hill. 
But chance success would be the gambler's thrill 
Who plays with God for worlds, and wins indeed 
The whole of Paradise for half-a-crown ! 



67 ?8 



EIGHT SONNETS 



III 



I HAVE no room for jealotis gods, and find 
No ring of joy or laughter in the Creed, 
Nor shall my great possession be resigned 
In fear or favour of my spirit's need. 
For joy is mine, and mine the teeming years 
Unfettered in a world impassionate ; 
Not mine a sorrowed Calvary of tears 
Where love was vassal to the lords of hate. 

Let others bow before a God unknown 

Enshrined in words they dimly understand. 

Let every man make Paradise his own — 

My Goddess breathes and leads me by the hand 

O hush ! I dare not speak of it alone, 

'Tis all too wonderful and strangely planned ! 



68 



EIGHT SONNETS 



IV 

Day after day my growing pinions beat 
Impatiently. Yet, in a place unclean 
T sought the dwarfed, the petty and obscene, 
And aped the clownish mummers of the street ; 
Till suddenly the Avorld grew strangely sweet. 
All eager at a touch, and thrilling-keen ; 
With half-forgotten hands I strove unseen 
To mould a little planet at your feet. 

You spoke and there was light, and slowly grew 
My teeming world of verse, a brotherhood 
Of music, thought, and wonder, born anew. 
Alive, aglow, in every varied mood. 
And when the waking truth is bursting through 
I feel you bend to see that all is good. 



EIGHT SONNETS 



If I had seen what hourly happiness 
In this my world your being could ordain, 
How then should I have trysted with distress 
And misery the cringing friend of pain ? 
If I had seen beyond the looming years 
Your shadow, grief had haunted me in vain, 
For what are cataracts of human tears 
Beside the boundless laughter of the main ? 

O barren days bygone ! Now every field 
Wakes clamorous with dawning life conceived, 
So has the magic universe revealed 
Whole happiness to one who half believed— 
Whole happiness, and in my heart concealed 
Wide wonder at the sacrament received. 



70 



EIGHT SONNETS 



VI 

*' Great men and happy years," you say from these 
Your knowledge came, and your diviner powers 
More thrilling than the honey- womb of flowers 
Or the bright star-foam of the Pleiades. 
So, did you learn the droning lore of bees 
From some be- medalled soldier ? Did you meet 
Madonna-hearted statesmen in the street, 
Or bishops, babblmg of the opal seas ? 

O poor deceiver, conscript joys belong 
To you as homage. For the happy years 
Bear fruit to-day, and blossom like the flowers 
That breathe of summertime in after hours. 
For you were loyal to a creed of Song 
Nor ever stooped to misery and tears. 



71 



EIGHT SONNETS 



VII 

Would I could throw my stuttering self away 
And shrine the soul wherein all wonders beat* 
Would I were you, for one brief holiday 
The whole shy universe before my feet. 
O happiness, to know joy's secret mine, 
To hold adoring ministers in fee. 
Narcissus-like to bless the Serpentine- 
And with the stars outdance Terpsichore. 

For once a poet sang of happiness. 
But now, like running flame, glad voices say— 
" Joy is the sheer antithesis of wrong." 
Enough, — and I, no longer comradeless, 
Behold exultant on the world's highway 
Your being, and the proof of Pippa's s'^ng. 



78 



EIGHT SONNETS 



VIII 

When you are old and dancing shadows play 

Around the sky-blown laughter in your eyes 

Shall I, unworthy of your new disguise, 

Forget the sacrament and go away ? 

Shall I adore, like sorrowed men to-day. 

The child who gurgled in first ecstasies 

At oxen (Mary said) that mooed surprise 

And snuffed with wondering muzzles in the hay ? 

O leave the past — the living world is mine 
Warm, passionate, and breathing. Even so 
Shall Life in after years make Earth divine 
And fire shall burn as long as embers glow. 
But he who babbled to the wondering kine 
Is dead, long dead, two thousand years ago. 



78 



KEATS 

Touch me, O Lord, and let my sonnet ring 
With echoes. Now his words of crowned belief 
In raging hours of pain and suffering 
Too high for praise, too terrible for grief,. 
Ring loud and clear. Last night his chariot rolled 
And I beheld him urge amid the stars 
Cloud-fashioned steeds of snow moon-aureoled. 
Himself a charioteer equipped for wars. 

Faster and faster — men of Blood and Pain 
Opposed in vast battalions, but he 
Rolled back their army to the dark again 
And triumphed while he sang exultingly 
As now he sings. Boy of the glowing brain. 
Dear Keats your name is Paradise to me ! 



74 



MEETING HER IN THE STREET 

She's coming down the road ! You know 

Those laughter- woken eyes ? 
I beckon at the stars— But O 

If she should recognise : 

Nearer and nearer yet she trod 

Till (mad blood-dancing joy) 
Down from the planet-fields of God 

She nodded, " Hullo, Boy." 



75 



HER HOMAGE 

SiLENCB outlives the argument of kings 

And best is dumb applause. Behold, she moves 

No soft-winged owlets blink, no cricket sings. 

Before she greets the murmuring world she love*. 

Now twirling parachutes of sycamore 

Hang waiting, and the rippled trout-rings die. 

The murmur round a jasmine honey store 

Is still — a linnet falters suddenly. 

From out the reeds an awe-struck otter peers 
As eerie quiet speeds from bush to bush : 
High Summer stands on tip-toe as She nears 
The woods, and magic numbs the missel-thrush : 
Above still grasses prick the listening ears 
Of rabbits, and a squirrel whispers '* Hush I " 



76 



REACTION 

Afraid, afraid, I sought the kindly night 
In fear that mocking fools should scrutinise 
The beauty I discovered in men's eyes, 
And mock me as a dreaming anchorite. 
For long in fear I sinned against the light 
And shrouded Poetry with vain disguise ; 
Before I sang, unconscious as the skies, 
Self -chanting songs to me supreme delight. 

But now, O littlest of all little minds, 
High-browed, alone, aloof, you little know 
How like you are to Brown, who lifts the blinds 
Of his suburban villa, just to show 
That he alone is up, but always finds 
The neighbourhood awoke an hour ago ! 



T7 



APRIL 

How much are you achieving 

O April day, 
By orchard looms a-weaving 

All apple -gay ? 
Tie on your cherry blossom, clothe your squills 
Madonna-blue, and give your daffodils 
Their collars of pale straw, and come away, 

Your rain-awoken hills 

Shall welcome May. 

What is behind your weeping 

O April tears ? 
Your lilac plumes are sweeping, 

Your silken spears 
Of chestnut bristle in the changing sky 
Whilst herded clouds foregather, 'neath the high 
Storm-loud arena's thundering charioteers : 

And beckoned silently 

The swallow nears. 



78 



MAY-JUNE 

Now is the swaddling husk of Winter shed, 
And waking Summer, robed in windy showers, 
Is heralded from silvered aspen towers 
And orchards in high blossom garlanded. 
Now sunlight, in the plumed laburnum flowers 
And purple lilac, trembles overhead ; 
And bees a-drone in field and flower bed 
Make clamorous the trade of teeming hours. 

Now the sweet-pea, all honey -laden, shows 
Full-swollen sails, her mooring ropes of green 
Encircle twigs. And soon the primrose queen 
Lights her pale lamps of Evening 'mid the glows 
Of brazen f?ower-suns, that burn between 
The yawning honeysuckle and -the rose 



79 



THE STROLLING SINGER 

Sun-bathed in Summer peace the village lay 

That afternoon. Along the happy street 

Milk-fragrant kine, and wagons high with hay 

Came lumbering. The fields were loud with bees 

And drowsy with the wind-stirred meadowsweet. 

From bowing trees 

Fell chatter, and above the garden wall 

Wide sunflowers beamed at spearing hollyhocks 

That dared the wind, and scorned the clustered stocks, 

And bore their laddered blooms high over all. 

Here amid Summer murmur and delight 
The strolling singer came. The people heard 
Stray snatches of a song — a laugh — a word. 
And gossiping in groups of two or three 
Stood all amazed. For no one came in sight, 
Only the wind was laden drowsily 
With mellow sounds that slowly growing strong 
At last became a song : — 
80 



THE STROLLING SINGER 

*' Bend down, the marsh and meadow holds 

Pale yeUow pimpernels, 
And sun-begotten marigolds. 

Thyme, orchis, asphodels, 
And borage born of ocean blue, 
Plumed armoured thistles, fever-few. 
Sea-campion globed, and clinging dew 

In giant flower-bells. 

"* Bend down — an ebon beetle prowls, 

And there a swinging bee 
Drinks honey from the laden cowls 

That clothe the foxglove tree. 
And giant peacock butterflies 
Light meadowsweet with sudden eyes, 
And through the tangled grasses rise 

Lucerne and timothy." 

Louder and louder grew the voice, until 
A figure specked the heaven-touching hill, 
And nearer, nearer, still . . . 
The villagers in mingled fear and awe 
Stood round on tiptoe waiting. Soon they saw 
A little sylvan man with beckoning eyes 
And limbs of lithe expression. Woven flowers 
81 o 



THE STROLLING SINGER 

And grasses, splashed with rainbow-tinted showers, 
And jewelled with alkiring butterflies, 
Enwrapped him. Russet face, clear-featured, gay 
As pebble-rumpled streams, and tousled hair 
5un-dyed and naked. His limbs were bronzed and 

bare, 
And sprang, it seemed, from the wild interplay 
Of flower-woven garb. Around his waist 
Twined traveller's-joy and honeysuckle, sweet 
And freshly dewed, and on his lissom feet 
Were pointed shoes of silver beech rush-laced. 

The village gazed in silence, till a child 
Began : — " Who are you, funny man ? 
Your face seems to be telling truth, your eyes 
Are just the colour of blue butterflies, 
O tell us who you are ? " 
The stranger smiled, 

And turned his face that bore the wistful, far, 
Strange wonder-look of one whose dreams come true. 
Who delves in darkened quarries of his brain 
Unhoped-for gold, and changes old to new 
As Spring rejuvenates the earth again. 
Of one who plays Narcissus in Life's pool 
82 



THE STROLLING SINGER 

And sees an image strangely beautiful . . 
Then suddenly they heard him cry :— 

*' Ck)me buy, 
I own the laughing earth. 
And all my chanted words are deeds ; 
I follow where my fancy leads. 
And sell my songs for mirth. 
What will you buy ? 

«' Speak hurriedly, and choose your song, 
The poplar's shadow creeps along, 
Search hurriedly the Earth and Sky, 
What will you buy ? " 

Meanwhile a crowd had gathered, in a ring ; 

The butcher, grocer, postrtan, parson, clerk, 

And all the village, open-mouthed and stark, 

Stood mutely marvelling ; 

And children clamoured round him with large 

ey«s 
And pelted him for songs, like countless hail, 
With pleadings, shouts and cries : — 

88 o2 



THE STROLLING SINGER 

Sing us a song of Paradise, 
Of railway engines, fawns, 
Of stolen queens in guarded towers, 
Of sprites and leprechauns " — 
O HUSH ! All were dumb— 
" Boy in blue smock, sucking your thumb. 
With hair like a tangled chrysantliemum. 
What would you like me to sing, Ocean- 
eyed ? " 
Loud the boy's answer rang, 

" / want a song of flowers ! " 
And this is the song he sang : 

" Sisters of mercy are Cyclamen, 
Snowdrops and Arums too. 
But Primulus, Violets, Stocks, Mignonette, 
Crocus aflame, and the Never Forget, 
Ai'e claaster than chastity too. 
Now sulphur Laburnum and Lilac, adieu, 
Good-bye April children to you ! 
For who 
Will climb up the flowers of my Hollyhock 

towers 
With butterfly steeple-jacks blue ? 
84 



THE STROLLING SINGER 

But, climber, beware ! 

Of Love-in-a-mist in a tangle of hair, 

Of thistly Teazles, and winged Sweet-Peas 

With tentacle tendrils that strangle with ease, 

Of butterfly Orchis a-clamour for bees. 

For Dragon may Snap you, and Sundew may 

trap you. 
Before you have started, before you have parted 
The grass at the foot of my Hollyhock trees. 
But think of the view 
Of the whole garden side ! 
We'll charter a dragon-fly homeward, and ride 
Down to our Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue, 
Lavender, London Pride." 

All watched him, held, bewitched, and with him clung 
To the green tops of slowly swaying towers. 
Where bees had scattered pollen-dust, that hung 
Above the teeming nectaries of flowers, 
And all again were young. 
But now the poplars cast their phantom bars 
In latticed shadows ; now a scarf unfurled, 
Like parrot-tulip petals hued and torn, 
Across the West was flung. 
8.5 



THE STROLLING SINGER 

And now, before the twUight bates the stars» 

Ere jewelled night is born, 

All silently the Singer left the world. 

Beyond the hill he passed, 

But singing all the while ; first loud and strong. 

Then fainter, till at last 

Came only jumbled echoes of a song : — 

" Bend down — ^the marsh and meadow holds 

Pale yellow Pimpernels, 
And sun-begotten Marigolds 

Thyme, Orchis, Asphodels "... 
(Fainter and fainter it grew 
Gentle as ebbing tide) 
" Butterfly steeple-jacks blue "... 
(Fainter it grew 
And died) 
Echoing " Rosemary, Marjoram, Rue, 

Lavender. London Pride " 



se 



THE FRENCH MOTHER TO HER UNBORN 
CHILD 

Beat quietly, hid heart. 

Build, little limbs, and brain divinely wrought. 
Grow, grow in peace. Around, the pangs of war 
Are powerless to cripple thee or mar 
Thy sure perfection. But, if Death besought 
For thee, our tethered souls could never part ; 
Beat quietly, hid heart. 
Form, primal thought, 

Close-furled and sheltered as the budding Spring 
Unknown, unknowing, yet divinely planned. 
But stay awhile, for sounds of battle ring. 
Stir, little hand 

Unrealized — I count the dragging hours 
And yearn to see it clutch at yonder flowers ; 
To see thy lucent feet and dimpled frame 
And gaze at heav'n-snatched eyes and know 

thy name, 
87 



THE FRENCH MOTHER 

But stay awhile. 

For thou art best alone away from Man : 
Wait longer, tears unshed and lurking smile 
Of joy enshrined where every joy began. 
Time hurries as the moments thump along 
(Hark, little ears, my heart is beating strong) 
Life is aglow, alive, a perfect soqg. 
Around the land is ugly, but apart 
I fashion thee in thought. Now hush, for sleep 
Is here. Close, eyes unopened, voice unheard, 
Be still. Grow on in beauty till day creep . . 
Hark to my whispered word- 
Beat quietly, hid heart. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper^^cess. 
Seutralizing agent: Magnesium Ox>de 
Treatment Date: June 2009 

PreservationTechnologies 

" 111 Thomson Park unve 



111 Thomson Pafk Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 

(724)779-2111 



